‘Falling Skies’ Season 3 Details Revealed

Although it teased the possibility of a strong and cohesive human resistance in the ruined city of Charleston, the real reveal during season 2 of TNT’s Falling Skies came in the last few minutes of the season finale. From the true purpose of the invader’s secret weapon, to Hal becoming an unwitting pawn in the alien’s battle with the human resistance, and, of course, the big twist of a mysterious new species of extraterrestrial – whose motivations and allegiances could spell doom or salvation for the human race – ‘A More Perfect Union‘ was all about surprises.

Now, with production on season 3 already underway, EW spoke with the series’ executive producer Remi Aubuchon on what fans can expect out of Falling Skies season 3.

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The New Aliens

‘A More Perfect Union’ began planting the seeds that something else was en route to earth when Ben (Connor Jessup) casually mentioned that the weapon the overlords had devised was not intended for humans. According to Aubuchon, the correlation there is that by destroying the skyward-facing weapon, the 2nd Mass essentially paved the way for the new aliens to make their presence known.

Aubuchon stated:

“Well, it seems to be a big coincidence that they took down this huge weapon, and all of the sudden these guys landed. So I would say that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that there must be some kind of connection between the two of them.”

Now the question becomes: What exactly did the 2nd Mass leave the door open for? With the skitter rebellion facing a major setback following the death of Red Eye, some outside help would likely be a pretty welcome sight. Additionally, if these (hopefully helpful) aliens are familiar with the overlords and their skitters, perhaps humanity will be getting some much needed intel on the still somewhat mysterious enemy.

“One of the things that I hope the fans will see is that of course this is an alien that doesn’t look anything like the aliens we’ve been confronted with since the beginning of the series. And in fact there’s a certain benign-ness. It’s uncertain as to whether or not he’s friendly or unfriendly, but the one thing that we can definitely determine is he kind of looks a little like us in a way. His eyes do not seem as shark eye-like as the overlords’ eyes did or even the skitters, who have a frightening look to them. So I’m hoping that some of the speculation will be “Wow, this is not only a game changer, this could be a game changer for the good.” And then that begs the question of “is it too good to be true?” I’m hoping that there’s a lot of questions running around the blogosphere and the Internet world because I think that that’s certainly what we had intended.”

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Hal Controlled By Overlords?

After a brief and apparently exhausting encounter with his old flame Karen (Jessy Schram), during the siege on the overlord’s weapon, Hal (Drew Roy) was rendered unconscious and thought to have suffered some sort of injury during the skirmish. When Hal awoke, however, it became immediately apparent that whatever had been done to him may be far more injurious to those in Hal’s company than to the young man himself.

So why choose Hal? Well, according to Aubuchon, there’s still enough of human Karen left to make bugging her ex-boyfriend part of a ploy in getting him back, while simultaneously striking a blow against the resistance.

“…The main thing that we were discussing in the writers room, and this is an idea that we had right at the beginning of the season, so it was very hard for us to keep holding back on it until the last episode of the season, is there’s this weird love triangle going on between Maggie, Hal and Karen. And in a weird way, we made it as subtle as we could, but Karen wants him back, and there’s nothing worse than an old girlfriend scorned, and so what did she do to him in order to make sure that a wedge was driven between Maggie and Hal? And since she’s sort of now a minion of the overlords, she has the power to do something really nasty, and I think that’s fun, and it should be fun in the third season too.”

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The Creepier Aliens of Season 2

Along with the goal of reaching Charleston, season 2 also introduced a bunch of new and creepy ways the aliens can attack and potentially control the human resistance. The parasite in Tom’s (Noah Wyle) eye set the season on the right foot, and things just got worse from there with the harness factory and the spider-like aliens that killed poor Jamil. To hear Aubuchon tell it, that’s part of the challenge he loves taking on with Falling Skies.

“As you probably know, Steven Spielberg loves the show and is very involved in it…we had one discussion about The Tingler, which is an old ’50s horror movie about this thing that would creep around and suddenly attach onto you and stuff. A lot of the harness factory came out of that discussion. And one day we were trying to think of how to come up with a clever way that we’ve never seen before that the aliens have somehow implanted something in Tom, and I think it was [producer] David Weddle one day sent us all a link of these parasite eye worm things in Brazil or whatever. I watched it and jumped out of my seat when I saw that, and I said, “OK, we’re doing that.” And the crawlies, well, that was a combination of everything. Steven said, “I want to see if there’s small aliens. Can’t we do small aliens?” And we started popping ideas back and forth and the writers and me and everybody. Then of course you get artists like Aaron Sims involved in the design of all that. It’s pretty amazing.”

Chances are, season 3 will play host to a whole bevy of new alien creepy crawlies that will plague the 2nd Mass, and maybe more. Who knows, perhaps the aliens that introduced themselves so dramatically at the end of the season will have some disturbing minions of their own to better serve whatever goal they have in mind.

New aliens, twisted love triangles and the high probability of more weird parasites and bug-like creatures to give everyone the willies; Falling Skies season 3 will likely have something for everyone when it kicks off next year.